Rango

Gore Verbinski, 2011 (8.8*)
Academy Award, Best Animated Film

I loved this trippy, clever, irreverent film! You know you’re into something heady when a family's pet chameleon character, hilariously voiced by Johnny Depp, falls off the family car on a highway,  and  gets blown by traffic smack into the windshield of the convertible driven by Hunter Thompson with Dr. Gonzo in the back, and Hunter and the lizard are wearing the same shirt ! That’s an indicator right there that this film may be a little induced by altered states.

Director Gore Verbinski directed the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and once again he seems to have fun directing this wacky stuff.

After falling off the car, he meets various desert dwelling critters that give him advice, with Alfred Molina as an armadillo telling him he needs to find the town of Dirt, out there somewhere. When he does, it’s inhabited by an odd assortment of western dressing animals. He meets a snotty girl, tho tells him, after mutual insults, "strangers don’t last long here", but when he discovers the town needs a sheriff and a hero, he volunteers, being lost and having little choice. He picks up his name in a bar, but I won’t spoil how he gets it, it’s mostly visual.


Much of this film is like that, references to classic westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, High Noon, even the later Quick and the Dead. There are also scenes paying homage to Chinatown and Apocalypse Now, and likely others that escaped me.

Ned Beatty gives his best John Huston (a la Chinatown) voice, as the mayor, who may or may not be involved in a plot involving the town’s water supply. British actor Bill Nighy is a dead ringer for the voice of Jack Palance as the villain Rattlesnake Jake. The plot is eerily similar to that of Chinatown, a parched town needs water, it never rains, and for some reason the town’s supply faucet has gone dry, spewing out mud and no liquid, so everyone is about to die of thirst like the crops already have.

Depp is perfect for this, delivering lines like "and stay out of my peripheral vision", and  "we should follow the pipe to it’s hydraulic origin, capture the criminals and solve this aquatic conundrum".

If you like classic westerns, as well as Depp’s irreverent, inebriated style, this will be right up your alley. Perhaps more enjoyable for adults than kids, it’s still a G-rated comedy that the entire family can watch together with many guffaws – though I’m sure the kids will often ask “what did he say?”, just like the background characters do.

There’s an uncanny scene by Tim Oliphant as the voice of Clint Eastwood, delivering the film’s best line.
Depp: “The Spirit of the West. Hey, is this heaven?”
Spirit of the West (as Eastwood): “if it was, we’d be sharing Pop-tarts with Kim Novak.”

I’m sure all the kids are asking, who’s Kim Novak? Well, she and Clint Eastwood are 60’s stars that both live in Carmel, California now – that should clear that up somewhat, and of course, Pop-tarts imply breakfast, which insinuates.. er, the hokey-pokey – that’s what it’s all about!

Read more...

Bolt

Byron Howard, Chris Williams, 2008 (7.8*)
Another enjoyable Pixar-Disney animated film, with some incredibly realistic graphics, at least the landscape portions (the humans look a little stiff and plastic). Bolt is a small Swiss shepherd who is rescued from an animal shelter in the beginning, when he is being appropriately cute with a rubber carrot toy. His person, as he calls her, is a little girl named Penny.

The story inexplicably then skips forward five years, at a point when Bolt and Penny are the stars of a kids tv show, in which Bolt rescues Penny from various perilous situation, most involving a green-eyed man (voiced by veteran actor Malcolm MacDowell).

The only problem with Bolt is that in order to make the show work, he has been fooled into thinking that Penny is really in danger, he has no idea that it's all a TV show, and everything is make believe. Mistaking Penny to be really in danger while he's trapped in his studio trailer, he manages to escape and immediately gets packed up and shipped away.

He runs into an alley cat named Mittens (Susie Essman, perhaps the weakest cast member - I'd have rather heard a pro comedienne like Joan Cusask in this role), and a hilarious hamster in a running ball, named Rhino.

Perhaps the lead roles could have been better cast. John Travolta is just ok as Bolt, he was actually funnier in real action comedies like Get Shorty. Miley Cyrus was just ok as Penny, no doubt selected for her young fan base.

Filmed just after The Incredibles, this has a lot of similar action, but the screenplay isn't quite as good, but it was certainly more entertaining to me than Up, which was Pixar's worst film to date to me, losing their best character in the first 10 minutes, and sticking us with two unlikeable characters for the rest of the film.

Read more...

Bugville

Aka Hoppity Goes to Town, Mr. Bug Goes to Town
Dave Fleischer, 1941 (8.5*)
Early animated classic from the Fleischer Brothers studio, those animation pioneers who created Popeye and Betty Boop, and also many technical devices that advanced the art to cinematic proportions.

In this story, bugs have a nice community going in a deserted lot near Broadway, where people rarely go by – some that do pose a threat by tossing lit cigarettes or cans, which become housefires and earthquakes for bugville. It’s actually part of an estate that’s seen better days, but is now in the hands of a struggling songwriter, played by Kenny Gardner, but based on songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, who wrote the song “Castle in the Sky” used here. Dick Dickens (yep..) needs to sell this song to keep the house, and those metaphorical lyrics become important to this plot.

Meanwhile in Bugville, Swat the Fly and Smash the Mosquito are the eyes and ears of evil landowner C. Bagley Beetle, who wants everything for himself. They spy on the happy inhabitants which include Hoppity, who’s courting Honey Bee, whom Beetle also desires, and whose dad runs the local Honey Shop, which is the local hangout of all the other bugs. (Ya gotta love a film with Swat the Fly as a character)

Hoppity takes off one day and finds the main house, with a well-tended garden, which he sees as paradise, and returns to the lowlands bugville and convinces the others he’s found a nicer, safer home. Along with garden hoses causing floods, the bugs find many other impediments to finding a new happy home, including climbing a skyscraper, a story which is paralled by the human character Dick, the songwriter.

I saw this long ago as “Hoppity Goes to Town” [see below], and couldn’t understand why it’s not as well-known as the Disney classics. It’s certainly in the classic 30’s animation style, it’s full color, is pretty funny, and has some pretty good music, especially the Castle in the Sky song by Carmichael. Plus it has BUGS! Decades before Bugz, and A Bug’s Life, Antz, and all the others (I’m just making up titles now.. but you get the picture, lotsa varmints in the cartoons..)

Read more...

The Illusionist (2010)

aka L'illusioniste
Sylvain Chomet, 2010, UK-France (8.0*)
#873 on our 2011 update of Top Ranked 1000 Films (all polls)
This is not to be confused with the real action film about a magician played by Edward Norton - this Illusionist is another hand-animated feature from Chomet, creator of the wonderful Triplets of Belleville, which emulated 50's Disney animated features in Chomet's own wonderfully warped style. In a documentary on the dvd, Chomet talks about the influence of those films on his early development as an animation artist, so he still renders these without computer animation, so these are made up of about 129,000 individual drawings for a 90 minute film, or 1440 per minute (24 p/sec x 60 sec), and of course, usually only the characters themselves move over a fixed background, which allow for much more detail in the animated 'set' since it won't be moving.

This film is actually a touching and poignant story from an unfilmed screenplay of French filmmaker and mime comic Jacques Tati. Like Triplets of Belleville and a Tati film, it has almost no dialog. Chomet has created a lead character that resembles Tati, so he's obviously animated this film to look like a film of Tati's. In this, Tati's character is a run-of-the-mill magician who plays near empty vaudeville venues.

Performing in Edinburgh, Scotland, he meets a young woman who is entralled by his tricks, and the two become close platonic friends; they explore the city together, and she eventually moves in with him.

Without giving anything away, I'll say that this is an adult story, with very little that would appeal to children, so right away that limits the market severely for animated features. This one doesn't even have the hilarity of Triplets of Belleville, which, though admittedly adult, still had Bruno the dog and a bicycle racer and other characters all ages could appreciate.

This is a valid effort by Chomet to give homage to Tati, and especially to his unfilmed story. I was quite touched by this story, and found it to be almost as unexpected and unpredictable as Triplets (but not quite, it's missing the same sparkle). For fans of Tati and Chomet, all will enjoy this, but it won't be one for the masses, only for the more discerning cinephiles.

Read more...

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

David Hand, supervising director (5 others credited as "sequence directors"), 1937 (8.7*)
Notably, the first full-length animated film, from Walt Disney Studio, features songs for kids like "Hi Ho, Hi Ho", without which the film would seem even longer than it does. Snow White is pursued by a queen jealous of her beauty, and she flees into the forest and discovers the house of the dwarfs while they are away at work and invites herself in. Of course, the dwarfs fall in love with her and want her to stay. She is later given a poisoned apple by the queen and falls into a sleep that only a prince can awaken with a kiss.

The best artwork was in the static backgrounds, in the style of the earlier Silly Symphonies cartoons from Disney Studios, probably the height of their talents (check out the Oscar®-winning Water Babies sometime to see what I mean), which provided an artistic setting for the simply animated characters to exist in. Here, the two styles blended together well, and became the Disney standard for a few decades, later copied by The Triplets of Belleville (2003), hand-drawn by Sylvain Chomet as a tribute to the early Disney style. animation

As innovative as this was, when it came out it only received special awards from the New York Film Critics, the Venice Film Festival, and an honorary Oscar®.

You know, as a kid, I always wondered about this film - I mean, a single babe of a young woman is suddenly living with seven adult dwarfs - it kinda makes you wonder.

Read more...

Toy Story 3

Lee Unkrich, 2010 (9.0*)Another winner in the ongoing series, this one's about when the kid, Andy, is finally old enough to go off to college, and what happens to the childhood collection of stuff in the room that is now being passed on to a younger sibling. We've all been through this at some point, losing countless millions in old baseball cards and Beatles memorabilia tossed out by moms (these two from personal experience!)

Along with all the other belongings are the child's favorite toys - in this case, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), the dinosaur, Hamm the pig (John Ratzenburger), Jessie the cowgirl (Joan Cusack), the potato heads, and all the other toys from the first two films. The mom is pressuring all the kids to come up with toys to throw out, toys for the attic, and toys to be donated to a day care center. Of course, Andy's (John Morris) toys get mixed up with trash, and then end up at the daycare center, with hilarious results.

They've kept the story energized with some funny twists. My favorite is that Buzz Lightyear has a Spanish mode and when he is accidentally switched to Spanish we read his dialogue in subtitles, and he flits around like a flamenco dancer, so along with language his personality changes to a Spanish one.

This is another tear-jerking, crowd pleaser from Pixar, but it maintains the level of the first two, and forms a perfect complement for the trilogy. Winner of 19 awards so far, out of 41 nominations, and up for five upcoming Oscars® including best picture. #29 on the IMDB top 250.

Our review of the original Toy Story, from 1993, and it's sequel

Read more...

Mary Poppins

Robert Stevenson, 1964 (8.1*)
This film was a lot of family-oriented fun, with nonsense songs and fantastic happenings, all after a magical nanny shows up in the form of Mary Poppins (who floats in using an umbrella), played with energetic gusto by Julie Andrews in a star-making and Oscar®-winning performance. Dick Van Dyke co-stars as a lower-class chimney sweep, who also has a bit of magic and music in his veins. Don't look to deep into this one, but expect lots of family-style Disney entertainment, with some magical animation overlaid over live action, a la Song of the South.

There was more than a little irony on Oscar® night when Andrews won for actress and Rex Harrison won for actor in My Fair Lady, since the two made the London play a hit yet Andrews was snubbed for the film in lieu of big box office draw Audrey Hepburn, whose vocals were dubbed by off-camera specialist Marnie Nixon, who also dubbed vocals for The King and I and West Side Story. (Nixon finally got in front of the camera in The Sound of Music, singing "A Problem Like Maria".) It's a shame that audiences were robbed of Andrews brilliant interpretation of Eliza Doolittle, as she is British while Hepburn is American, and Andrews made the role famous to begin with; the original cast recording will bear out my argument. In the history of major cinema, this remains one of the major casting gaffs ever committed. One can only assume that the Oscar® for Poppins was the consolation prize for the snub of Andrews for the bigger film, which won best picture and seven Oscars® overall.

Read more...

Despicable Me

Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud, 2010 (8.0*)
Another typical kids animation feature, not as good as the best ones (Finding Nemo, Wall-E), but better than some others (Up, Monsters Inc, Polar Express). This involves three very cute orphan girls and a Mr. Burns-like super criminal, Mr. Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), who adopts them on a trial basis as part of a scheme. The plot is actually science fiction, as various criminals want a 'shrinking-ray' device that reduces objects to a tiny portion allowing the fiendish to steal even one of the pyramids!

Of course, it's a preposterous story, with a obligatory chase sequence, and of course it's got the major cuteness-sentimentality factor going to make five-yr olds like it, but it does have a nicely warped sense of humor. As Mr. Gru goes into a secret bank, the sign reads "Bank of Evil - Formerly Lehman Bros"

The wonderful little yellow creatures you see in all the promotions for this film, the knee-high yellow thingies sometimes with two eyes, sometimes just one, are called Minions - of the rich criminal, basically personal servants. Steve Carell is just ok in the title role, it really needed someone more 'animated', pun intended.. like Robin Williams or Jim Carrey.

Read more...

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson, 2009 (8.5*)
A hilariously adult animated comedy, but still G-rated, in which the star, George Clooney as Mr. Fox, has no constructive line of work (he's a chicken thief), which causes constant stream of harangue from Meryl Streep as Mrs. Fox. The dialogue is a throwback to the 30's screwball comedies style, so it's sparkling in comparison to most talking animal pictures, which seem aimed at five year olds. The talented comedic cast also includes Bill Murray and Owen Wilson.

The animation has the old style claymation/puppet look, which makes it look more like real objects than cartoons, so that adds to the element of reality the storyline establishes. This was a refreshing antidote to all the Disney-esque animated ventures which always seem to follow a similar heart-tugging path that requires sad violin music. If you're looking for a different kind of comedy, check this out.

Read more...

Happy Feet

George Miller, 2006 (7.6*)
From the same George Miller that directed The Road Warrior and produced Babe, this animated feature won an Oscar®, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe. A penguin couple, played by Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, have a newborn called Mumble. While these Emperor penguins all have a song in their heart and attract mates with it, Mumble can't carry a tune but instead has Fred Astaire toe-tapping feet, which baffles the others and makes him an outcast.

The elders, led by Hugo Weaving (The Matrix, V for Vendetta), represent those who worship the "Great Wind" and leave it all up to the whims of nature, the invisible 'deity'. Mumble thinks the humanoids (called "aliens") have messed up their fisheries due to stories about them, so he sets off to find them and let them know they need to stop.

The first part of the film is almost non-stop pop and R-and-B songs, which get old fast. What saves the film is some amazing animation: the ocean, penguins underwater, long shots of thousands of them on glaciers. The story is really pro-environmental propaganda, which is ok but will likely be lost on kids, who are obviously the primary target audience for a film that is 75% pop music.

Robin Williams provides some comedy at least, as Ramon, leader of a gang of Hispanic sounding Adelie penguins, and as Lovelace (named for Linda, star of Deep Throat? now that's just bizarre..), a self-promoting guru who charges pebbles for advice and answers to questions, as these penguins use pebbles to build nests to attract females. Brittany Murphy is Gloria, who is Mumbles love interest. This would be a lot better with more dancing and less singing, but should still be quite engrossing to kids, who seem amazed that animated characters can sing and dance like people.

Happy Feet actually won 14 awards (awards page at IMDB), most for animated feature, and a sequel is due out this year.

Read more...

Avatar

James Cameron, 2009 (8.1*)

Basically, Avatar is another war/western in space, much like Star Wars and Starship Troopers. The story could easily be the U.S. vs the Souix nation, who are sitting on gold in the Black Hills, their sacred ground given to them in a government treaty, which was then ignored when gold was discovered. In Avatar, on planet Pandora (don't expect any mythology here, it's not that intelligent), the Na'vi are stting on "unobtanium" (silly name, right?), which is under their sacred tree, and of course, a giant earth-based corporation wants to mine the valuable substance like gold, oil, copper, uranium on earth; this 'evil empire' also uses ex-military misfits as a mercernary army to subdue the planet's natural dangers. The natives, like the Souix, the Incans, and countless others, are both expendable and primitive (they shoot bows and arrows for gosh sake!), therefore irrelevant to the profit-minded and anyone with more military power. (Here the big battle is helicopters vs. dragons, land robots vs. men on horses and angry rhinos)

One crippled soldier, played by Sam Worthington, is introduced to the Na'vi culture through use of a computer-connected cloned being, called an "avatar", hardly a God incarnate like the original meaning of the word. In this case, more like soldiers and scientists, who are led by a largely-wasted Sigourney Weaver, incarnated to both study then exploit these natives.

Though the special effects and animation design are superb, the story is not original, has nothing unexpected or new in it, and is actually predictable and frustrating. If you've read science fiction, it's a combination of Ursula K. Le Guin's novella "The Word for World is Forest", Roger Zelazny's novel "Lord of Light", and Cecelia Holland's aliens from "Floating Worlds". At least someone around Cameron has some science fiction literacy, but not much originality.

If you liked Star Wars, you'll like this, as it's aimed at the same roughly 12-yr old audience. Star Trek (the 2009 one) is actually a better sf film, and even won the Empire Award in the UK for "Best SF/fantasy Film" over Avatar. Three technical Oscars® (special effects, art direction, and bafflingly cinematography which won over the great work done in Hurt Locker) were about right for this - it is an obvious crowd pleaser 'yarn', but not very artistic, subtle, complex, or literate. Stephen Lang is terrible as the macho military commander (read "evil incarnate"), but then with lines like "On my mark", "light her up", and "take em out", he couldn't be very good no matter what. I'm not sure that 3-D would help this much, and I'm also not sure why people are going to see this over and over - I suppose because no one reads great science fiction novels any more. Cameron's Aliens is still a better sf film (so is Terminator 2), even that film's limited dialogue was better and funnier, as in "game over, man, game over!", and "then why don't you put her in charge?"

Note: Ironically, the IMDB avg fan rating is 8.4 - I didn't see this until after I ranked it, but that was my original rating, before rewatching it. It's currently #93 on the IMDB 250, but that will probably fall over time as fans are the first to rate these, then they slowly decline to their more proper place. Cameron's Aliens is ranked #53.

Read more...

Up

Peter Docter and Bob Peterson

2009 (6.8*)

I'm not the first to jump off the Pixar bandwagon over this film. In spite of the Oscar® nomination for best picture, this is certainly Pixar's most disappointing effort, and many fans online agree. They forgot the two main attributes animated comedy films should have: good animation and funny humor. This film opts for the pseudo-realism of real 3-d objects rather than funny or even attractive characters. Ed Asner (usually great to me) voices Carl, a bitter elderly widower whose wife died before they could achieve their dream of moving to or at least visiting the adventurous Paradise Falls in South America, where an adventurer named Muntz (Christopher Plummer) discovered a rare bird skeleton, only to be accused of fraud, then driven out of the scientific community, and vanished, never to be heard from again. Sound like a great premise for a comedic animated feature? Well, if you think like me, you're right - it not only isn't a good premise, but the best parts of the movie are when Carl's wife Ellie are still alive, which are unfortunately only the first ten minutes.

Carl strikes a construction worker who destroys his mailbox, and before being forced by court order to a retirement home (more humor?), he floats his house away with thousands of helium filled balloons, which is really the best part of the animation. Once you've seen that, you've seen the best part of the artwork. There's a fat boy, Russell, fed on ice cream til he resembles "a tick about to pop" (to quote Jean Shepherd), who was under Carl's porch when this happens, tricked by Carl into a snipe hunt at night (more bad-natured attempt at humor), who is not only not attractive to look at but has not one funny line in ninety minutes of animation. (Ironically, this screenplay is Oscar-nominated; did they even see this film?)

To make matters worse, the film is full of the worst-animated and least funny dogs in film history. Give me Bruno from The Triplets of Belleville anyday - these dogs make one wonder if Pixar has ever even seen 101 Dalmations. I blame co-directors Peter Docter and Bob Peterson, who also co-wrote the terrible screenplay with about three mild chuckles (most involving Carl's elderly devices - there's a denture joke and a hearing aid joke - sound like more terrific comedy? believe me, it's as mediocre as it sounds). Even the big colorful bird running around, which they call Kevin, is not funny nor attractive looking as a character - it's just stupid and will only appeal to five year olds, who won't get the elderly humor. And don't get me started on Christopher Plummer's homicidal, self-centered adventurer character - totally despicable, never funny, and homicidal - a real "jungle fuerher"; what the heck were they thinking? Cruella De Ville (101 Dalmations) was classy, and an inspiration for Halloween costumes no doubt, compared to this monstrosity.

This film got lost trying to be an Indiana Jones adventure, only without even that much humor. The animation is just plain terrible for Pixar, nothing in the film is either unique, well-drawn, or funny. I can't believe they could ever sell any toys of these characters either, which I'm sure is their goal. Who's gonna want a fat kid in a boy scout uniform or a squat old man in a suit, with a walking cane? Watch Triplets of Belleville, for a hand-drawn masterpiece that got both points of classic animation: show us something unique in the artwork, and give us some funny characters. It has about 200 more laughs than this film. I was really looking forward to this movie - I loved Wall-E with a passion, and it should have been nominated for best picture in 2008. That film had a much better story, terrific animation (the robots on the loose, the spaceship tilting), much more creativity, and was far more touching as well - and made some hilarious comments about mankind, like "red is the new blue", causing everyone to instantly change their clothing color.

As for the 3-d realistic look, this is not even as good as either Toy Story, which were both even far below Nick Park's brilliant claymation series, Wallace and Gromit - four of those won Oscars® for Park, and if not for little or no competition, Up wouldn't win any, I'm afraid. WHY they didn't let Ellie survive to make this trip with Carl is beyond me - that would have made a much more likeable story as Ellie had 5 times the personality of boring and quiet Carl; that much was evident from the opening scenes of them as kids. If one had to die before this journey, it should have been Carl, not Ellie. I suppose kids and die-hard Pixar fans will like this, or at least say they do - but I'll wager that even most of them will be at least a little disappointed with this lackluster effort.

Pixar needs to get back to using imagination, and not resting on their software laurels. Just because they can now animate hair, or show all five fingers, that doesn't add to humor or make it artful. It's really impossible for any review of this to have "spoilers", as they've done that themselves. How this got nominated for best picture is beyond me - it must be on Disney's reputation or contribution to ads for the Academy Awards - especially when Wall-E and Finding Nemo were passed over.

[Note: I'm only reviewing this here because fans of animation should see this; and no doubt many easily pleased people will like it anyway - it's actually winning some critics awards for best animated feature, likely due to no competition. This film makes all the other Pixar and Disney films look great, so in that regard, it gives us something for comparison, making us appreciate the classics from Snow White, to Beauty and the Beast, Nemo and Wall-e, even Cars..]

Read more...

The Triplets of Belleville

aka Les Triplettes de Belleville
Sylvain Chomet, 2003,
France-Belgium-Canada-UK (9.2*)

This is a brilliantly original animated feature done the old school way, by hand drawing each cell, which requires 1440 images per minutes, 86,400 per hour - just like the Walt Disney animated classics, before computers could do the "tweening", or the steps in-between the beginning and ending drawings. For those of us who grew up on classic cartoons, this comes as a welcome return to a nostalgic past.

This unique vision came from the mind of French animator Sylvain Chomet, listed as creator, producer, director - and it's unlike the typical family fare. In fact, most kids won't even get the humor, as it pokes fun at old b&w cartoons, the Andrews Sisters, Django Reinhardt, Fred Astaire, Josephine Baker (all in the first five minutes in a parody of early cartoons), the French penchant for eating frogs, square-shouldered Mafioso, the US tendency toward huge gluttonous rear ends, and bicycling enthusiasts obsession with the grueling Tour de France. Everything in this film is exaggerated, it's really a comedy of caricatures and hyperbole.

The nearly wordless (no subtitles needed!) story is about a tiny grandmother's love for her grandson, training for the Tour de France, kidnapped by underworld figures, and who eventually crosses paths with the jazz singing act The Triplets of Belleville, past their prime but not past their humor. This inspired insanity also rewards viewers with perhaps the most humorous dog in film history, a round, spindley-legged parody named Bruno, who constantly thinks of his food bowl, even dreaming about it, and whose favorite activity is barking at trains that regularly pass by the house. The most fully realized character in the film, we see his motivations by viewing his dreams, shown in black-and-white.

Winner of 18 awards out of 40 nominations; it beat out Oscar®-winner Finding Nemo for best animated feature at many festivals and critics awards, and even won best film in several. In any other year, it surely would have been the Oscar® winner for animated feature. The American Choreography awards gave it "best choreography in a feature film" (!), and the Motion Picture Sound Editors gave it "best sound editing in an animated feature film". The jazzy song "Belleville Rendezvous" was nominated for an Oscar®, and won awards, as did the score. Chomet is a genius of an artist, and he dedicated this film "to my parents". There's even another visual joke after the closing credits, and be sure to watch the crazy music video and special features on the dvd.
Awards page at IMDB

Read more...

Grave of the Fireflies

a.k.a. Hotaru No Haka
Isao Takahata, Japan, 1988, anime (8.4*)
This is a tough film to watch, as it concerns the efforts of two children to survive in Japan in WW2, but is a very poetic war fable, rarely seen in films. While their dad is off in the navy fighting in the Pacific, a young teenage boy, Seita, is forced to take care of his 4 yr old sister, Setsuko, when their mother is killed by U.S. bombers. Times are harsh for everyone, the schools and factories have been bombed, there's no work, little food, and children like this, in both Japan and Europe, had to fend for themselves in order to survive, and many didn't.

This is done without much preaching or propagandising at all, which is one reason this film is #185 on the IMDB top 250, and placed #324 on our compendium of internet film polls. The story is a nice mix of reality and childish fantasy. The animation still has the cheap "doe-eyed" simplicity on the people, but the backgrounds, landscapes, rain, ponds, and fireflies are all very artistically done, and reminded me of early Disney cartoon art (Silly Symphony series) and actually have the quality of full-length films. The story is from a novel by Akiyuku Nosaka, based on that author's real wartime experiences, so it's a universally authentic war tale that is bound to tug the heart of those with compassion for children orphaned by wars, and the struggle of all the innocent civilians facing wartime deprivations.

[Note: one ignorant commentor at IMDB said, "hey, get a job" - typical uncaring American response. Hey dummy, the country had been bombed into oblivion, there were no schools nor jobs available. Are people really this stupid here? Even in our wealthy, non-wartorn society there are few jobs available and we don't have any excuse other than criminals running a system which is not working for the common person.]

Read more...

The Incredibles

Brad Bird, 2004 (8.2*)
One of the more sarcastic and humorous of the recent animated classics, the Incredibles actually referes to a family of ex-superheroes of that name, led by the voices of dad Craig T. Nelson and mom Holly Hunter. They are now in the witness protection program, and bored to death. Of course, unless they jumped back into action, we wouldn’t have a film, so you can expect the inevitable animated superhero action here to spice up the comedy. Samuel L. Jackson voices another superhero, Frozone, who works with ice, a reference to Ice Nine from Kurt Vonnegut’s A Cat’s Cradle, perhaps? This story has a script so good that it was nominated for an Oscar. Two Oscars, Sound and Animated Feature.

The Incredibles also won 16 awards for animated feature that year, and numerous other awards. Here is the awards page for it at Internet Movie Database:
Incredibles Award Page

Read more...

Wall-E

Andrew Stanton, 2008 (10*)
This terrific science fiction comedy is Pixar's best so far. It's rare that an animated film combines both a great story with terrific and imaginative artwork. You would think that after the Toy Story films, Cars, and Monsters Inc that the creativity there would slow down, but Wall-E tops them all. It's basically about a garbage compacting mobile robot living on an unpopulated earth. However, drones are being sent to try to find a return of life on earth, and naturally Wall-E comes into contact with life again (or there'd be no story), as we now know it, and with hilarious results. This film has a lot humor, as well as a lot of heart, making us all somehow care for what happens to a mechanical garbage man! Another rarity: a children's film that adults should enjoy just as much. Winner of over 35 awards already this year, for some odd reason it's not nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and will have to settle for Animated Feature as a consolation prize.

Link to Wall-E's awards page at IMDB: Wall-E Awards

Read more...

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Dir: Bill Melendez, 1965 (8.6*)
All you have to do is hear the terrific Vince Guaraldi jazz piano music, which is worth owning on CD, naturally, and this tv cartoon special lights images in your head that can evoke waves of humorous nostalgia. The comic strips of Charles Schultz come alive, and along with “The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” (which parodies Easter and Christmas both, with promises of the "great pumpkin" appearing overnight in the pumpkin patch to leave presents for believers), these are must-see’s for kids of all ages, and anyone with heart. The wry tone, the simplicity, the kids voices, Linus' love of Beethoven, Lucy pulling the football back (a joke that never gets old), the silent dances of Snoopy (who fantasizes himself to be wartime aerial ace The Red Baron) all this works perfectly and are short enough for the short attention span world. These are now some of the best holiday classics for the whole family, and can be enjoyed again and again.

Read more...

Beauty and the Beast

Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, 1991 (9.1*)
Best Musical/Comedy Picture (GG)
This is the animated Disney version, and one of their best animated films ever. Much of the design for the animation movement mimics camerawork on early Hollywood musicals, which is appropriate since this also has some songs that are very well integrated into the plot, which is basically about a trapped princess who falls in love with a "beast of a man". This was the first animated film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, and is a treat for kids and adults both. Three songs were nominated for Oscars, a first. Two Oscars (Music Score and Song)

Read more...

101 Dalmatians

Wolfgang Reitherman, 1961 (8.2*)
Animated Disney doesn't get any better than this. Dalmatians have a litter of 15 puppies, and if that isn't enough of a problem, the evil Cruella De Vil, the voice of Yvonne DiCarlo and probably the best name for any film villainess, wants to make a fur coat out of a hundred-and-one Dalmatian puppies. Man, that's evil personified! Of course we have heroes, narrow escapes, nail-biting, but it is Disney, so you feel confident that they won't skin 101 puppies! Forget the live action remake, this version is the one to see again and again.

Read more...

Fantasia

James Algar, 1940 (8.5*)
Way ahead of its time, Disney created a series of artistic interpretations of short classical music works, and though each film was animated, the styles (other than the classic Mickey Mouse one) were not the usual Disney cartoons. In fact, some were downright frightening for small children, like "Night on Bald Mountain" or "Rite of Spring". Each viewer will likely have different favorites, and not all will work for everyone, but it's safe to say that Mickey as "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" ranks way up there as the best of both animated music and Disney's favorite character. This was an historical film in the history of animation.

Read more...

Family Guy

Seth McFarlane, 2008 (8.2*)
Hey, there's a new Family Guy DVD out, Vol. 6... if you haven't seen this hilarious animated show from Seth McFarlane, you should - it's the next best thing to the Simpson's on TV... In fact, check out ALL the volumes from the beginning. Excellent writing, very witty...

Here's a blurb about the new set from my buddy John at M80:
A pop culture phenomenon the collection features the show’s 100th episode and a total of 12 edgy episodes from Seasons Five and Six. Catch the Griffin clan’s ridiculously hilarious antics such as Stewie’s not-so-successful attempt to kill Lois, Brian’s discovery that he is a father and patriarch Peter’s frequent visits to the Drunken Clam.

Family Guy videos & images: http://m80im.com/newsroom/tag/family-guy/

YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/foxabulous

Highly recommended! Though some may find some language offensive, as intended by the producers.
... the Jman

Read more...

Cars

Dir: John Lassiter, 2006 (8.5*)

I loved this Pixar animated movie, from the same crew as Toy Story. The plot involves a young Nascar racer (the cars are characters), voiced by Owen Wilson, who gets dropped out of his trailer on the way to the next race, somewhere in the American southwest, and is basically lost along Route 66, in small town that somehow survived the freeway being built. He becomes trapped in the town, with some wonderful characters: Paul Newman as an old pickup truck who’s really a former Nascar champ, Bonnie Hunt as his lady friend, and a host of others (Cheech Marin, John Ratzenburger, Katherine Helmond, Larry the Cable Guy, George Carlin, Richard Petty) who have various businesses around a town that no longer has any tourists. Randy Newman wrote a beautiful song called "My Town", an Oscar nominee sung by James Taylor, about living in a small town like that time and freeways (and therefore people) have sadly grown beyond and passed by. Great script for me since I’ve been all the way across Route 66 twice, and crossed on the freeway (I-40) once, so the nostalgia of this story really hit home for me. For that reason, it's probably going to mean more to adults than kids, who won’t understand the references to America’s greatest highway. Look for the closing credits and all the towns the producers thanked, it reads like the songs "Route 66" and Little Feat’s "Willin" put together: Tucumcari, Tehatchopee, Winslow, Wynona, Gallup…

Read more...

Toy Story

John Lassiter, 1995 (8.5*)
Terrific animation from Pixar, their first full-length movie done with computer animation. In this story, the toys of a boy named Andy come alive with the arrival of a new one, Buzz Lightyear, an astronaut voiced by comedian Tim Allen, while the "leader of the gang" of old toys, a cowboy named Woody, voiced by Tom Hanks, is not only jealous but confused. Buzz and his miraculous 'high tech' stuff, like a laser beam, threaten Woody's status as smartest toy, and thus the natural leader.

This is a wonderfully human story with terrific visuals and an enjoyable plot for all ages. When you suspend your belief and buy into the fantasy, the toys become human and elicit our feelings as if they were real. The sequel, Toy Story 2, is almost as good, and deals with the poignancy of discarding old toys that were once best friends..

Winner of 19 awards and 33 nominations, ranked #147 on the IMDB 250

Update: here is our review of 2010's Toy Story 3, a very worthy sequel and perhaps best of the trilogy, nominated for five Oscars®

Read more...

Wallace and Gromit: Three Amazing Adventures

Dir: Nick Park, 2005 (10*)
Best Animated Short (AA), 3 total
Nick Park’s amazing claymation short films won 4 Oscars before he was able to get financing to make full-length films (Chicken Run, Curse of the Were-Rabbit). The first short, Creature Comforts, is not included here but the next three are: The Wrong Trousers, A Grand Day Out, A Close Shave. They are all amazing; I gave a mother Trousers once for her kid and he watched it 30 times in a week! Park made these by pushing clay around and snapping a frame at a time, he could only film 2-3 seconds per day, and would spend two years on a 10 minute film! The "sets" each fit on a folding card table. Park said that at day's end they'd be ankle deep in clay teeth, which were constantly raked out during dialogue and never reused. Wallace represents Park's 'weekend inventor' dad (nothing worked), and Gromit, the 'smarter' dog, is Nick himself. The results are hilarious and the best of their type.

Read more...

Finding Nemo

Dir: Andrew Stanton, 2003 (9.8*)
One of the best animated childrens films, all the qualities of classic Disney. Thoroughly enjoyable story with funny dialogue, made funnier by the casting of Albert Brooks and Evelyn Degeneres. The story concerns dad fish Broooks looking for son fish Nemo who gets swept up in a tropical fish collectors net, and ends up in a dental office aquarium! Creepy stuff… but not as creepy as Chicken Run. Along the way he runs into Degeneres, and various sea creatures, including some lovable sea turtles. This is a must see, best five all-time for animation. The others: Snow White, Fantasia, Beauty and the Beast, Toy Story. (I also like The Incredibles, Cars, Hoppity Goes to Town, Curse of the Were-Rabbit) Well, Wallace and Gromit's Amazing Adventures are the best, but all short films - still, four Oscars in all!

Read more...